Pants on Fire

I was at a late lunch at a restaurant with Kim this weekend. We were enjoying our time together, as of late she’s been able to go out shopping, walk around, and was getting back to normal after her two knee replacements. So as I said, just got our non-alcoholic drinks when this woman walks up to us, whom I recognize from the car parked next to us, even if she had her head buried in her cell phone, texting.

“I just want you to know you damaged my car when you carelessly got out and hit my passenger door.”

I knew she was lying, but I wasn’t she was not going to be challenged in her advanced state of anger. I am more than compensating so as not to get out of my car “carelessly.” I go out of the way not to bump other cars, it’s the way I was raised. Living in apartment complexes most of my adult life, I’m old enough to know not to damage anyone else’s vehicle, lest ye be damaged as well.

Well, I disagreed. Her voice was so sure that I was the only culprit of this dastardly deed.She acted like how could I ever live with myself or even enjoy food from now on knowing that I was a cold blooded door damager. After some more of me denying and her trying to convince me I suggested we walk out to our cars and assess this great injustice that has befallen her. I had insurance and was willing to swap information if there was something I was involved in.

Well, we walk out, and she points out a small dent with a scratch on front top of the front passenger door on her white Nissan Altima, on a diagonal from her mirror, no more than a quarter inch, that was already oxidizing. If we were in some tropical salt air climate instead of a cool day in Pennsylvania in February, she might have had some credence. But for it to oxidize so soon, unless heat was involved, it wasn’t going to happen within fifteen minutes from leaving the scene. Her vitriol was so strong, again, I wasn’t going to challenge her with effects of chemical composition to given the dry, cool air and time for something like this to happen.It was so high on her car door, I was almost sure there was no way for my car to do it.

I opened my car door, and bam. The hard rubber molding that runs down the middle side of the car like a bumper first hit her car door, much lower than her scratch and about two to three inches short of this proposed wound. The top and bottom corners of the door were nowhere in proximity to the scar. Physically, unless there was a black line running down her car door where the bumper would have rubbed off, and about an inch of car door also sawed off, there was no way for me to have done this damage.

“There is no way it could have happened. Look.The bumper would have stopped it.”

She was not happy with this set of facts presented to her, and the Goth pixie-haired woman stomped away without a word.

I stood alone in the parking lot wondering what her motives in this were?Such a tiny scratch and dent, hardly even something to look at.It might even have been caused by a rock kicked up from the road it was so small. Why would she go through all the trouble of tracking me down when she had to know I didn’t do it?